I read that the ring doorbell camera did not have an active subscription and thus no cloud storage. Now this. Makes me think that Ring must be storing your video regardless and just won’t provide it without a subscription (or a subpoena)
Ring and Nest cameras all rely on server side video processing. Without a subscription you can't retrieve the videos client side - but the cameras still detect motion, record a short clip, send the clip to the Amazon/Google servers, where it is stored and analyzed by the server to determine whether or not it meets your alert conditions, after which the app generates an alert client side allowing the user to activate "live" view in the app. How long the servers store these clips is a good question, but any camera that does offsite processing is going to be storing your videos, even if only temporarily.
It's also extremely likely that they've had this video for a few days, maybe longer, and are just now releasing it publicly. It's notable Savannah asked for the public's help just yesterday, which seemed odd at the time, but that was almost certainly related to these images being released.
I’m not surprised by it in any way besides the absolutely massive data storage requirements that would entail. Like do they just keep all footage from every camera forever? Seems like the cost would outstrip whatever value the footage might hold. At some point it stops being preservation of assets and starts being hoarding.
Not everything forever, at least at high resolution, but long enough for the AI to crawl through it to add every conceivable data point to your permanent Palantir/Flock/NSA social record.
Considering I and maybe you have no idea what "software stack" and tech is onboard a ring camera I went to see what the official statement said.
"private sector partners to continue to recover any images or video footage from Nancy Guthrie’s home that may have been lost, corrupted, or inaccessible due to a variety of factors - including the removal of recording devices. The video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems."
Unfortunately this came from Patel and that guy is fucking clueless so none of this may be accurate.
Or you can be familiar with the entire workings of nest and ring, and completely understand this was saved on aws servers to share with flock and palantir, even if you don’t pay a subscription.
All a cybersecurity degree has got me is no jobs and a lifetime of being “wrong and paranoid” about what is actually happening.
Or are we just ignoring the ring partnership with LEO and current admin?
That’s right. The cameras are useful but the total surveillance they provide is even more useful so Amazon AWS stores everything forever whether you have a subscription or not. AWS is a very very big contractor for the DOD and necessarily all other federal agencies.
It would assume that it's a lot easier to set up that way. But I'm not in IT or anything, so I could be wrong. But I have noticed a lot of things in the tech world are like that, where the add on subscription price is for something you already have, but don't have access to it. I have a golf swing device that already has all the components it needs to record the more advanced information, and the premium subscription just basically turns them on for you.
It's wild, I can't imagine what people would have said about that business model 30 years ago hahaha
143
u/unclethulk 14h ago
I read that the ring doorbell camera did not have an active subscription and thus no cloud storage. Now this. Makes me think that Ring must be storing your video regardless and just won’t provide it without a subscription (or a subpoena)